


Just Another Dinner Party

by somekindofseizure



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s06e15 Arcadia, MSR, Swingers, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6744988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully play married at another event while on the case in Arcadia Falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Dinner Party

It had been against Scully’s better judgment to come here.  Forget better; it was against every level of judgment she had - medium, decent, barely functioning.  All of them said no.  But Mulder was adamant that another dinner party was another opportunity to gather information about the lovely people of Arcadia Falls.

So far, food and drink at this dinner party consisted of a neglected cheese plate and wine glasses with little identification charms on the stems.  Scully’s was an alien – Mulder had picked it for her, spitefully taking the unicorn for himself.  There was evidence of frenzied “company is coming” behavior - the nauseating smell of microwaved quick meals, the fresh vacuum stripes in the carpet.  Conspicuously, the dining table was not set.  Instead, the guests were in the living room together, all gathered in pairs nervously around a dish of keys.  

Swingers.  It was a swingers’ party.  

By the time she realized it, Mulder was already grinning, a step or two ahead of her.  The couples were being paired up and their partners would be the Hansons, the other newish couple in the neighborhood, who presently skittered close to them like a pair of nervy ants.  Mulder looked at Scully with his eyebrows glued to his hairline, as if he could not believe his luck at this happy accident.  She had wondered for a moment if he knew, if he’d tricked her.  But no, he’d clearly been expecting more pot roast and fake footsies too.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” Michelle Hanson said.  “You?”

Scully was too busy trying to get Mulder’s attention to answer, and he was too busy answering to pay attention to Scully.  

“Oh yeah, Laura and I, we’re old pros,” Mulder said.  Scully could hear him swallowing a burst of laughter.

Mrs. Klein guided the giddy couples around like a cruise ship director, shuffling foursomes into various rooms of the house.  Everyone else was settled when she finally came and pulled Michelle’s hand, leading the Hansons and Petries to their own private love den.

“You newbies take the kids’ room.  They’re at their grandparents’ this weekend. It’s two twin beds.  We like to give the bigger spaces to the more” – her voice grew scandalous – “advanced couples.”

She pushed the door open. Spaceship bedspreads, lamps in the shape of cartoon characters.  Michelle and Ted entered as Scully firmly grabbed Mulder’s elbow.

“We’ll be just a minute, Mr. and Mrs. Hanson,” she said.

“First names, Laura,” the husband said with a sporty point.  “Seems we’re going to be getting to know each other.”  Scully felt her jaw twitch angrily.  She waited until the Hansons were safely in the bedroom and then shoved him.

“I told you this was a mistake.”

Mulder whisper-giggled and rubbed his forehead.  “I… don’t even know what to say.”

“We have to get out of here. Now,” Scully said.

“Okay, calm down, let’s just think this through.”

“Think it through? Mulder, they’re swingers.”

“Well, we’re not swingers. I mean, we’re not even a couple. So it’s weirder for them than it is for us to have sex with them.”  This was no time to tease her.

“This isn’t funny. I’m saying I got a migraine.”

“They’ll think we chickened out.”

“So? That would be a perfectly reasonable response.”

“I bet you were the kid that called your parents when you got to a party and found out there were no adults in the house.”

“Oh, and you’re comfortable with this?”

“It’s a sex party.  I mean, I get it, I’ve been to some wild things in my life, Scully. I have another side, you know, a side you haven’t seen.”

“Mulder, you have a sweater tied around your neck.”  

“Look.  I’ll say I need to use the restroom.  Give me a few minutes to snoop around and when I come back, we’ll make our excuses and leave,” he said, finally at least attempting to make some sense.

“What do you expect me to do with him while we’re waiting?”

“Make conversation. Keep him occupied.  You’ve been on dates before.  I think.”

He slithered toward the deserted living room, dreams of couch cushions to overturn and drawers to jimmy open.

“Not with someone else’s husband while their wife was watching,” she hissed after him.  She took a deep breath and entered the bedroom.

“My husband is feeling a little under the weather.  He’ll be right back,” she said.

Michelle was nervously buttoning and unbuttoning the top of her cardigan, leaning back on a pillow sham covered in what seemed to be animal astronauts.  Mr. Hanson – Ted – was waiting on the other bed, leaning on his palms with his socked feet on the floor, like he was expecting Scully to take his temperature.  

She tried to stop judging them.  Who knew what their life was like?  Who knew why they needed this?  It’s not like her own love life was some sort of utopian model.  She hadn’t had sex in… nevermind, now wasn’t the time for math.  Ted was not bad-looking and he was polite.  And right now, all she had to do was sit next to him.  But as soon as she sat on the bed, he whisked her onto her back, chuckling ostentatiously.  His wife chuckled too, a high pitched echo of her husband.

“He’s very romantic like that, sweep you off your feet,” Michelle said.  Scully smiled, lying on her back beneath Ted’s propped elbow gaze. “He always asks me to dye my hair red,” Michelle said, a hint of sadness creeping into her gameness.  Scully felt like jumping out the window.  Too bad there were child locks.

“So… how ‘bout all the rules here?  It’s a lot to get used to, isn’t it?” Scully attempted, trying to make something come of this ridiculous endeavor, lest Mulder return empty-handed.  

“It kind of comes naturally to us,” Ted said.  He put on some kind of dreamboat romantic voice.  “We’re a play by the rules kind of couple. Because… rules are meant to be broken.”

_Mulder, get the fuck in here._

“Sorry.  My husband has been having some acid reflux problems,” Scully said, figuring the grosser the better at this point.  “He might even be vomiting.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Michelle said.  “You two get started.  We’ll catch up.”

“How ‘bout it Laura? A little extra time for me to warm you up?” Scully felt her lips tighten and an eyelid twitch, but she forced a smile. Ted leaned down and kissed her with gusto.  The wife made a tiny squeak at first contact, a noise that must’ve meant approval, because Ted twisted his face around, milking it the best he could against Scully’s tightly-sealed mouth.

After a moment or two, Scully did feel something besides repulsion and discomfort.  Not desire, no, not in any way.  Compassion maybe.  Ted was wearing aftershave and cologne.  His breath reeked of mouthwash.  His hands were shaking a little.  These people were trying. However misguided, they were putting themselves out there in life.  She tried to rally and give him a little more oomph to work with as a reward.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Mulder said from the doorway.  “Getting started without me.”

“You’ve been gone for a while,” Scully said pointedly, shaking her hair out of her face.  “Are you feeling okay?” she led, nearly swinging her legs out of bed before he even answered.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. She stared at him wide-eyed.  What the hell was he doing?  He was climbing into bed with Michelle and taking his loafers off, that’s what.  Michelle wasted no time – all those minutes watching her husband smooch Scully had apparently gotten her worked up.  She grabbed Mulder’s face and Ted turned Scully’s chin back to him.  She heard the momentary smack of lips and panicked as the realization hit her that Mulder might not share her definition of “too far.”

“Okay, stop…” Scully said. It wasn’t ideal for her to feign illness.  It would look strange after Mulder’s episode, but it was all she had.  Then Ted beat her to the punch.

“I know.  I can’t go through with it.”

“What?” Scully asked, surprised.

“I can’t do this with anyone but my Michelle.”  Michelle cooed from across the way.

“I know what you mean, I miss my Laura,” Mulder hammed.  He was really getting a kick out of this whole thing.

“Great.  You know, we tried.  Let’s all just go home,” Scully said.

“But we just moved here. We don’t want them to think we chickened out at our first party, do we?” Michelle asked, nibbling her cuticles like a sixth grader at an eighth graders’ birthday.

“Let’s just switch back,” was Ted’s brilliant idea.  Mulder had that look again – like he’d pulled a prize out of a cereal box, like he’d been gut punched by a hilarious pal.

“That’s a good idea, honey,” Michelle said, scrambling out of bed and crossing the chasm between them. Scully straightened her cardigan and tried not to stomp or glare as she passed Michelle and slid next to Mulder with her back facing the Hansons.  She pulled his face close as he awkwardly held her around the waist.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing?” she whispered adamantly.

“I found something out there, some kind of handwritten log of infractions, but I didn’t want to spend any more time gone.  I was hoping to find another opportunity to slip out and look at it.  Maybe if we get this done fast… I don’t know about you but I could probably be done in three minutes.”  She gritted her teeth as he snickered noiselessly.

Scully could hear some faint grunting, some clothes softly rustling from the Hansons’ bed.  She grimaced as the ickiness seeped over.

“I cannot believe you got me into this,” she said with an abrupt little pinch of  his neck, where her hand happened to be resting.  Mulder’s arm over her waist tensed as he dragged himself closer to her, his chino’ed knee slipping between hers.  His face was so close to her now.  To Scully’s great annoyance, she found herself paralyzed, breathing deeply, heart pounding. She hadn’t been kissed in… Well, five minutes, by Ted.  But this here was something else.  

“I’m going to say I have a migraine,” she threatened, but the way he was looking at her chipped away at her resolve like cheap nail polish.  Like he could stay here looking at her all night, forget who they were or where they were, as if this is exactly what they were supposed to be doing. His torso was politely curved away from her body, his stomach flat beneath his corny yellow polo shirt.  She had the urge to follow him, to press herself against it, but the setting was completely unforgettable to her.

Suddenly, she heard something worse than the makeout noises from the other bed.  Silence.  Then Ted piped up.

“Hey, are you two gonna cuddle all night or what?” 

Mulder nodded infinitesimally at her.   _Go ahead, say you’re sick._   But Scully couldn’t find the words. Finally he opened his own mouth.  “Actually…”

And she kissed him. She didn’t really know why.  Maybe just to be contrary.  Maybe to stay in character.  Maybe because he smelled so fucking good in his new clothes with his preppy aftershave.  Mulder, stunned, sucked air in through his nose as he kissed her back.  She wriggled closer to him, as if chasing every bit of oxygen he had, forcing him to straighten out against her.  She knew what she was looking for and she was slightly ashamed.  She just wanted - needed - to know it was there and then she would make her excuse.  But before his hips pressed into her, he jumped back, pulling away, licking her peachy lipstick off his bottom lip.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said.  Not even a whisper, really, just mouthing it, but Scully heard it because she was hearing another version of it in her own head.  And just as she was deciding what to do with that voice, she heard Michelle’s.

“Um, do you think you guys could leave us alone?”  Scully looked over her shoulder. Michelle and Ted were already half naked.  “We thought it would be a turn-on to have other people in the room but...”

“But?” Mulder asked, unable to get enough of this scenario.

“You guys just aren’t really doing it for us,” Ted said matter-of-factly.  “Your chemistry seems kind of off.”  

“But what about the notebook?” Mulder stage-whispered as Scully marched him through the living room.

“We’ll get it tomorrow when we come over for Spin the Bottle.”

*

Scully’s hair was nearing the end of the fifteen-minute blow dry opportunity window.  She had switched from shower to bath right after shampooing, and just sat there, forgetting to dunk and re-wet during her soak.  Always the sign of a bad day, she thought, when a shower is just too much.

At this point, no matter what she did with the blow drier, her hair was going to be weird.  She didn’t care, she’d do it over tomorrow.  She just wanted to go to sleep and forget about the sulking sting of rejection she was still nursing.  She leaned over and pulled up the plug, listening with satisfaction as the drain monster gurgled up the remains of her evening.  Mulder knocked softly.  She grabbed a white towel and wrapped it tightly around herself before opening the door.

“Thanks, was just going to brush my teeth –“

She tried to smile to convey she was not angry with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.  She swooped into the bedroom behind him and shut off the lights.  By the time he came out, she was lying on top of the regulation-made bed in her towel.  She was beyond pajamas, even, tonight. She clutched the towel and stared at the ceiling as he shuffled toward the bedroom door.

“Night, Scully.”

“Night,” she mumbled. He stopped in the hallway and turned, his long, lean shape silhouetted by the cookie cutter sconce lighting of the hall.

“I don’t get what you’re so upset about.  You didn’t think we needed the extra recon in the first place.”

“I don’t care that we wasted our time.  I mean, I do. But that’s not the point.”  She rolled away from him toward the window, fetal style, tucking the edge of the towel safely under her armpit.

“Then what is it?”

“Mulder, we got thrown out of a sex party for not being sexy enough.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“I’m serious.  Do you know how long it’s been since I had sex?”

“I don’t know that you’re ready for the competition you’re setting up.”

“We couldn’t even convincingly pretend to kiss.”  She immediately regretted the whine in her voice.  This is exactly why she had made a point of not discussing it with him on the way home.  He didn’t respond but she could tell he was still there.  The light was still dipping over her shoulder.   Suddenly she felt the bed bounce as he sat on the opposite side. His breath landed on her upper back as he lined himself up behind her.

“It’s not a big deal, Mulder.  I don’t need comforting.”  He was quiet for what felt like an hour.  The thing was, she did find it comforting.  She closed her eyes, considered just leaving him there, falling asleep like this, warmed and incubated by his presence.  Let him leave whenever he saw fit.  But then he spoke.

“I just thought you might want a chance to prove you can do better.”

She opened her eyes and waited a moment before she snorted, “To you?”  His long arm reached over her and switched the lamp back on.  He nodded at the window opposite them.

“To the neighbors. They’ll be on their way home soon.”

He rested his chin on her shoulder.  She looked up at him, trying to weigh what percentage of this conversation was a joke. Seventy percent?  Eighty?  She felt ill-equipped to make the call without a blowout or a single item of clothing. She had no defense system in place for this.  His voice rasped as his Adam’s apple moved against her skin.

“I wasn’t pretending,” he said in a voice that sounded like only maybe forty percent.  His eyes searched her face, looking for a response. Finally, she reached her bottom arm up to his cheek and strained a little to reach him as he leaned down over her. Once the distance was closed, their lips found each other easily, having gotten their awkward introduction out of the way earlier.  His nose nudged hers awkwardly a few times before he tipped her shoulder to roll her onto her back, sucking her lips hard to prevent any breaks in the kiss.  She opened her mouth and held tight to the towel.

She sank under his weight, his jeans slushing against her bare legs, his t-shirt catching on the fibers of the towel.  His hand was caught under her the weight of her head, fingers tangled in her damp hair. She tried to remember the last time she had bedroom hair as she nudged her scalp against him.  He took the hint, scrunching and twisting, tugging it as she reached up to give him more of her mouth.  And then she got what she was looking for earlier.  It was distant, as if bubble wrapped, muffled by the thick towel’s double layer between them, but he was definitely hard.  She tried not to smile as she inwardly patted herself on the back.

“You think that’s funny?” he asked softly.

“No,” she said, making sure to come across as zero percent kidding.  She pressed him away a bit and reached for the edge of the towel.  He stared at her fingers poised deliberately on the tiny triangle of terry cloth, and she felt a wet heat settle inside her, spread rapidly.  He sucked in his bottom lip and let it seep out from under his teeth, inadvertently giving her the push she needed.

“Get the light,” she demanded.  He reached for the lamp and darkness fell once again around them.  The ambient streetlight took over, making the tips and edges of their bodies poke out of the shadows.

“What about the neighbors?” he asked.  She unwrapped the towel and pulled him flush against her bare, chilled skin.

“This isn’t for them.”


End file.
